Stratigraphy

Wheeler, Mortimer. 1954. Archaeology from the Earth. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

The classic statement of excavation through stratigraphic control. Wheeler’s method emphasizes sections, balks, layers, and the three-dimensional recording of deposits. Historically fundamental, although the Wheeler–Kenyon grid system is no longer the dominant excavation strategy.

Kenyon, Kathleen M. 1952. Beginning in Archaeology. London: Phoenix House.

Important for the development of what became known as the Wheeler–Kenyon method, particularly in Near Eastern archaeology. Her excavations at Jericho were especially influential in making stratigraphic excavation central to Levantine field archaeology.

Barker, Philip. 1977. Techniques of Archaeological Excavation. London: Batsford. Later editions 1982, 1987, 1993.

A decisive move away from rigid Wheeler-style excavation toward open-area excavation. Barker insists that archaeological deposits be understood as sequences of events rather than simply as horizontal layers.

Harris, Edward C. 1979. Principles of Archaeological

Stratigraphy. London: Academic Press. 2nd ed., 1989. This is probably the single most important theoretical book specifically devoted to archaeological stratigraphy. Harris distinguishes archaeological stratigraphy from geological stratigraphy and formulates the principles underlying the Harris Matrix.

Harris, Edward C., Marley R. Brown III, and Gregory J. Brown, eds. 1993. Practices of Archaeological Stratigraphy. London: Academic Press.

This is especially useful because it shows how Harris's theoretical principles were actually applied in different excavation and recording systems.

Carandini

Carver, Martin. 2009. Archaeological Investigation. London/New York: Routledge.

Carver gives a broader theoretical treatment of excavation strategy, archaeological deposits, formation processes, sampling, and interpretation. It is particularly useful for understanding why excavation cannot simply be equated with “following the strata.”

Schiffer, Michael B. 1987. Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Schiffer's distinction between cultural and natural transformations is fundamental because the observed stratigraphic sequence is not identical with the sequence of past human actions. Deposits have been displaced, eroded, redeposited, truncated, reused, disturbed, and transformed.

Pitt-Rivers, Augustus Henry Lane Fox. 1887–1898. Excavations in Cranborne Chase. 4 vols.

Important for meticulous contextual recording and the principle that archaeological value depends upon documented associations

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Petrie, W. M. Flinders. 1891. Diospolis Parva: The Cemeteries of Abadiyeh and Hu, 1898–9. London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1901.

Especially important for sequence dating, although this concerns seriational rather than strictly depositional stratigraphy.

Woolley, C. Leonard. 1934. Ur Excavations II: The Royal Cemetery. London/Philadelphia.

Worth consulting as an example of the increasingly sophisticated use of stratigraphic reasoning in Near Eastern archaeology before Harris.

Lucas, Gavin. 2001. Critical Approaches to Fieldwork: Contemporary and Historical Archaeological Practice. London: Routledge.

Lucas, Gavin. 2012. Understanding the Archaeological Record. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lucas is especially valuable because he asks what an archaeological deposit or context actually represents epistemologically. His work moves beyond the technical question “what lies above what?” toward the relationship between deposition, material traces, events, temporality, and archaeological inference.